قراءة كتاب The Violin Some Account of That Leading Instrument and Its Most Eminent Professors, from Its Earliest Date to the Present Time; with Hints to Amateurs, Anecdotes, etc.

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The Violin Some Account of That Leading Instrument and Its Most Eminent Professors, from Its Earliest Date to the Present Time; with Hints to Amateurs, Anecdotes, etc.

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المؤلف:

Dubourg George

دار النشر: Project Gutenberg

الصفحة رقم: 4

mistake!—Sir William Hamilton—Epigrams—on an aged musical trifler—Ralph Rasper—advice to amateurs—the scales—Corelli’s solos—Spohr’s Violin-School—no real self-taught violinists—epigram—self-knowledge necessary—qualities necessary to the leader of an amateur party—opera music—listening to classical quartetts—a story—friendly advice in rhyme.—pp. 312, et seq.

CHAPTER VIII.

FEMALE VIOLINISTS.

(See Addendum, page 397).

Objections to ladies playing the violin, answered—Queen Elizabeth and her violin—Madame Mara—her early practice on the violin—Maddalena Lombardini Siemen—reprint of a letter from Tartini to her—Regina Schlick—her maiden name Sacchi—a particular friend of Mozart—anecdote of Mozart and the Sonata in B flat minor—Louise Gautherot—Minerva and the flute—Luigia Gerbini—pupil of Viotti—Signora Paravicini—patronized by the Empress Josephine—her reverses and subsequent success—her graceful mode of bowing—Catarina Calcagno—receives instructions from Paganini—Madame krahmen—Mdlle. Schulz—Mdlle. Eleanora Neumann—Madame Filipowicz—Horace Walpole’s visit to St. Cyr—Mrs. Sarah Ottey.

CHAPTER IX.

ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE VIOLIN.

The subject stated—Otto’s treatise—the component parts of the violin—the Cremonas and their makers—Hieronymus Amati—Antonius Amati—Nicholas Amati—Antonius Straduarius—Joseph Guarnerius—distinguishing characteristics of these makers—Tyrolese instruments—Jacob Steiner—later Tyrolese makers—Klotz—Statelmann, of Vienna, and others—repairers—the principles of construction—the bass-bar, sound post, bridge, f holes, &c.—strings (called Roman) from Milan—means of producing a smooth, clear tone—Andreas Amati—Gaspar De Salo—Giovanni Granzino—Giovanni Paolo Magini—career of Antonio Stradivari, Giuseppe Guarneri, and of Jacob Steiner—notable sums offered for instruments—imitators—Richard Duke and the London makers—M. Chanot’s investigation into the true form of the violin—result—M. Savart’s experiments—M. Vuillaume’s copies—his adventures in search of materials—copies Paganini’s Guarnerius—his probity—specimens at the Great Exhibition of All Nations—construction of bows—Beware of Vampers!—pp. 341, et seq.

CHAPTER X.

MISCELLANEOUS ANECDOTES, COLLECTED SCRAPS, ECCENTRIC VARIETIES, &C.

Characteristics of the fiddle species—a caricature repudiated—ambition let down—a new resource in difficulty—a prejudice overcome—fifty years’ fiddling—another fifty years of it—glory made out of shame—discrimination—the Cremona fiddle—an apt quotation—the leading instrument victorious—sending for time-keepers—musical exaction—a device for a dinner—a ‘practising’ coachman—a footman to match—a royal ‘whereabout’—precocious performers—fiddlers’ tricks—eccentric varieties of the violin kind—the fiddle of Ireland—of Tartary—African fiddle—Greek fiddle—an eight-stringed violin—an intermediate instrument—something more than a violin—an air violin—automaton violinist—the street-fiddler—epigrams.—pp. 364, et seq.

THE VIOLIN,

ETC.

CHAPTER I.

ORIGINAL AND EARLY HISTORY OF THE VIOLIN.

First seat him somewhere, and derive his race.—Dryden.

The Fiddle Family, like other tribes that have succeeded in making a noise in the world, has given exercise to the ingenuity of learned theorists and time-seekers, who have laboured to discover for it an origin as remote from our own era, as it is, I fear, from any kind of truth. It has probably been conceived that the Fiddle, associated as he has been, from generation to generation, with jigs, country-dances, fairs, junketings and other rusticities, had descended too low in the scale of society—that he had rendered himself, as Shakspeare for a while did his own genius, “stale and cheap to vulgar company”—and that he required to be reminded of his primitive dignity, and of his very high ancestral derivation—if he had any. This latter point was of course to be first established; but, as your zealous antiquary is a wholesale dealer in time, and is never at a loss for a few centuries to link his conjectures to, the matter was easy enough; indeed, the more doubtful, the better, since doubt is the very life of theory. Accordingly, we have been invited to fall back upon “the ancients,” and to recognize the Epigonion as the dignified and classic prototype of our merry and somewhat lax little friend, the Fiddle. To certain ancient Greek tablets relative to music, which have been somewhere brought to light, Professor Murchard has minutely assigned the date of 709 years before the Christian era; and the following passage, Englished from his translation, is stoutly alleged by the antiquarian advocates of the glories of the violin race:—“But Pherekydes began the contest, and sat himself down before all the people, and played the Epigonion;—for he had improved the same; and he stretched four strings over a small piece of wood, and played on them with a smooth stick. But the strings sounded so, that the people shouted with joy.”

This is plausible enough, but far from conclusive. It is but the outline of a description, and admits of various modes of filling up. If the instrument partook at all of the violin character, it might seem, from the reference which its name bears to the knees, to have been the rude progenitor of either the double-bass or the violoncello, which have both, as is well known, their